A trip to the doctor

It was Tuesday morning and I was getting ready to go to the doctor for an evaluation of my shoulder and I started to get that uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Uh oh. The mad cow.
Not totally unexpected, but unwelcome as always.

Of course I was anxious, I told myself, I was going to the doctor, and I hate going to the doctor.
I tried to reassure myself, but the damn cow kept kicking against the sides of its pen.
It wants out!

I made my way down the hallway to the living room where my wife was waiting for me.
"The mad cow's kicking in, but what's the worst that could happen? He could say I have to go back to work tomorrow" I say in the most self-confident tone I could manage.
We both agree that this is the worst that could happen, and that it was very unlikely to happen. I was still in my sling and the only thing that I could do with the right hand was type. I could barely move the arm.

We get to the doctor and he inspects the incisions in my shoulder and then he grabs my wrist with one hand and places his other hand on my shoulder. Unexpectedly, he lifts my wrist so that it is over my head.
"How's that?" he asks.
"Scary as hell but ok." This is the first time that my wrist has been above my head in eight weeks. It didn't hurt, it felt more stiff than any thing else.
The doctor was pleased.
"I'm going to have to release you to do some work" he started "but light finger duty only."
No lifting, pulling, pushing, carrying.
In other words none of the stuff I normally had to do on an everyday basis.
He and I agreed that I probably would not actually be going back to work yet, but he had to say that I could do some very light work, it was just a Workers Comp thing.

"There's nothing I can really do at work" I told my wife as she drove me to the store to drop off my doctor's report. There was no way I'd be going back to work.

What the hell was 'light finger duty' anyway?

Wednesday morning at 6am I was clocking in for work.
They found some light finger work for me to do.
Hell, they invented some light finger work for me to do.

Mad Cow 101

I suffer from Mad Cow.

No, not the disease that eats your brain (though some days that seems like that what is going on) and I really shouldn't say suffer, because to me that makes me sound like a victim. I am not a victim.

Let me start over.

I live with Mad Cow.

When I say Mad Cow I am referring to anxiety disorder.

I call it Mad Cow, I am a Boston Legal fan, and one of the characters on Boston Legal, Denny Crane - played by William Shatner - is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's Disease. Rather than admit that he is slipping because of Alzheimer's he insists that he is slipping because he has "Mad Cow;" Denny eats so much beef he must surely have contracted Mad Cow, at least that is his reasoning.

This just strikes me as being funny, so in a effort to try and deal with my problem I call it "Mad Cow."

Let me explain to you what my Mad Cow is like.

Pick something that you are afraid of, deathly afraid. Let's say, spiders. Now, imagine that you have to reach into a dark closet and there might be a spider in there. Feeling a little uneasy? Ok. Now, imagine that not only is there a possibility that there is a spider in there, but it is a giant and hairy and has fangs and is the size of a small cat. Scared?

That is how I feel going about my everyday life. Anxious about doing the most ordinary things. Going to movies, driving across town, I think you get the idea. It is almost like I'm living inside this force field and it is incredibly difficult to pass beyond it.

But I can pass beyond it - with the help of medication.

And there is only so much medication I can take.

I have good days and bad days.

Some days I feel like I can go out and conquer the world.

Other days I can barely make it down the road.

I am hoping that by talking about this I can help myself and maybe even help others.